


Lullaby for a Stormy Night

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Frigga (Marvel), Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Has some accompanying art, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mind Meld, Post-Thor (2011), References To Canon Suicide Attempt, Sibling Incest, This is very soft and self indulgent but I make no apologies, odin and thanos are punk ass bitches who get what's coming to them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-10 12:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17426141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: After Loki falls, Frigga and Thor go to rescue him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharlika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharlika/gifts).



> So I saw this [officially Marvel-sanctioned magazine article](https://twitter.com/hiddlestomas/status/1067937251097759744) about how Frigga had actually found out that Loki was alive after his fall but that neither Odin or Thor would believe her, and obviously this is bullshit of the highest order and needed desperately to be fixed. Many thanks to my nameless friend for providing the article, and my friend Rai for providing the seed (“can thor and frigga just go on an adventure to find loki and bring him home PLEASE”). I have to admit inspiration from several places here - “A Wrinkle in Time” for reasons that should become obvious, l2cl’s gorgeous [IW fixit fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16537853) for the flavor of the magical weaviness I’ve used, themantlingdark for a line that has always stuck in my head and is kind of the heart of the story which is that Frigga and Thor are Loki’s “two great loves,” and Vienna Teng for the song that makes the title. The rest of it is me.
> 
> *****UPDATE: thank you times a million to my friend Elsa who drew[the LOVELIEST picture of Mama Frigga!](https://twitter.com/spreadtheashes/status/1103042175800090624?s=19) It's completely non spoiler-y so please check it out and give it some love. ❤️**
> 
> Note: I marked this "choose not to use warnings" bc there is some violence but I don't know what constitutes graphic enough violence to merit a warning? I'd say it's definitely nothing worse than what we see in the movies though. Also this is rated M currently but may jump up to E, we'll see.

Frigga had a room high in one of the palace towers. It was round, like the tower itself, with a window that for millennia had looked out over Asgard’s waters to the Observatory and the brilliance of space beyond. Despite the indisputable beauty, however, this wasn’t the view Frigga was usually interested in. Instead, her eyes and heart and mind were ever fixed on the arrow straight sliver of the Bifrost, that rainbow-hued bringer of sorrow and joy; for it was this tiny filament that bore her sons away from her and into danger, but it was also what brought them back. Her sons, the two pieces of her heart that had been torn from her breast and allowed to roam free.

Her sons, once two, but now one. The Bifrost, once the gateway to the cosmos, now ending in a shattered stump, its ugly jagged end echoing the wound in her heart.

She sat in her tower room now amid many-colored stacks of thread, her hands flying at her loom, her foot working the treadle. The threads made up the physical aspect of her weaving, but as she worked she drew in strands of other things. The glint of starlight off the water. The happy buzz of a family celebrating the birth of a child. The cool subaquatic dreaming of the plankton. When she was done she was going to take the magically imbued cloth and wrap some of Loki’s favorite possessions in it. Keep it here with her.

Loki had often told her that her weaving room was his favorite room in the palace. They would eat breakfast together here, or read together, or weave together; in fact, she had been working on teaching him a particular trick of seidr weaving when…

Her eyes wandered to the broken end of the Bifrost again, and her hands nearly faltered, the grief still fresh even now almost a year later. She had made many mistakes in her life, but none cut her as grievously as how badly she had failed her second son. She’d spend every night since his fall wishing she could go back and do it differently. Odin had been so persuasive all those centuries ago, convincing her that it would be better for Loki to not tell him of his parentage so that he would never feel different, but it was clear now how very wrong he’d been. About a great many things, in fact.

Frigga began drawing in strands for weaving indiscriminately as her emotions took hold of her. No longer picking and choosing, she threw herself at the fabric of the universe and tugged viciously at it. Felt it warp and pull under her indelicate touch. Here, she spun out the thread of an avalanche destroying a town. There, the cry of a forest in flames. Here, the song of a dying star. There, the despair of a planet in chaos. It didn’t seem enough. Farther she reached. Deep into the branches of Yggdrasil.

Here, the savage joy of a bloodthirsty tyrant. There—

She drew up short.

There—

It was impossible. 

This time, her hands did falter. Then they stopped completely. Frigga’s eyes stared into space, unseeing and yet not.

Loki.

The cluster of threads that made up Loki was impossible to mistake for anyone else. He was there. Right there. Right where? Where was there?

Trembling, Frigga called upon every reserve of strength within her and cast her astral projection further than she ever had before. Everything was blackness for a moment of awful anticipation. When she opened her eyes, though she had been hoping beyond hope to see Loki staring back at her, she instead saw what appeared to be an interior corridor of a spacecraft. She looked down at herself; at this distance, her projection was thin and transparent, ghostlike. How long she’d be able to hold it she didn’t know.

Cautiously, she stole down the hallway. It opened into the back of a large chamber full of navigation panels and a huge window—the bridge, most likely. There were only two people there, conferring near the front, one huge and broad with a bald head and purple skin, one thin and spindly with a high soft voice, and she could barely make out pieces of their conversation.

“...have located the Tesseract on Earth...know not what they...yes, very good...perhaps our Asgardian…”

 _”Our Asgardian”_.

The conversation stopped abruptly, and the high thin voice said, quite clearly, “Someone is here.”

Swiftly, Frigga fell back and scurried down the corridor, questing for the threads that said “Loki.” She found them, and followed them down one turn and then another, feet moving faster and faster in dread of being followed and found, before ending at a closed door. Holding her breath, Frigga stepped her projection through it.

Loki’s surprised face filled her vision for an instant before he fell back in startlement.

“My darling,” Frigga choked out. She’d never felt more relieved in her life. “You’re alive. Where are you, my love? Tell me, I’ll come for you—”

She saw open yearning on his face for a split second before his expression shuttered and his brow twisted in a scowl. She raised one ghostly hand to him.

“Quickly,” she pleaded. Desperately, she tried to take in as many details as she could. It looked like he was locked into this room, and he was pale, and sweaty, and he had clutched in his hand a scepter that glowed with a sort of sluggish baleful light. Though his grip on it was white-knuckled, he seemed like he was trying to hold it as far away from himself as possible.

“You need to leave,” Loki hissed.

“ _Where are you_ —”

Dimly, Frigga heard footsteps approaching.

“I can’t let them see you,” Loki said. And then, his voice soft and full of regret, “Goodbye.”

He waved the scepter through her projection and she felt it start to dissolve.

“Loki,” she tried to say, uncomprehending, but she was already back on Asgard.

*

Dinner was long past and yet Thor’s bed was still a distant dream, because his father would not stop talking. Thor slumped dismally over the arm of his chair. Odin was standing in front of the fire in the hearth, pacing slowly, and he’d been going on about Bifrost repair for at least an hour, by turns asking Thor’s advice (testing him, it seemed like, rather than actually valuing his opinion) and lecturing him. The repair _was_ a problem, because they couldn’t get the materials to Asgard in a timely fashion since they, of course, didn’t have the Bifrost, and had to rely on space travel, and it was turning out to require a lot of negotiations and logistics—and yes, technically it had been Thor’s fault—but, honestly, how his father could still be annoyed about it was beyond Thor’s ability to comprehend. It had been done for the very noblest of purposes. But for a man who purported to value all life equally, Odin certainly wasted no opportunity to make it clear that deep down he really wished that Thor hadn’t sacrificed their space port to save a few backward savages.

Being treated like this made Thor even more upset than it would have in the past, because not only had Odin banished Thor to Earth for holding similar opinions himself, it turned out that _Loki_ had been one of those backward savages all along. Odin’s own son. Thor’s brother. His best friend, his... It was almost literally unimaginable. Thor had certainly been unable to imagine it until he’d heard it from his father’s own lips. And Thor still didn’t know everything that had happened while he had been stuck on Earth, but he was absolutely certain that that particular revelation had been part of what had driven Loki to—

His brother’s loss was still a gaping hole in his heart, and Thor shied away from ruminating on it now. Instead, he turned his thoughts longingly on pounding a few people into the dirt, having a soak in the baths with a bottle of mead or six, and then collapsing into bed with the herbal sleep mixture Eir had made for him that prevented dreaming (it was the only way he could sleep without watching Loki fall into the Void over and over and over and—)

It was like this, with Odin saying something sharp to catch Thor’s wandering attention, and Thor frowning off into the distance and trying and failing miserably not to think about Loki, that Frigga found them.

His mother burst into Odin’s study, hair and eyes both wild, and Thor and Odin both snapped to attention.

“What is it, dear?” Odin asked.

“Loki,” she gasped. “He’s alive.”

Thor’s heart clenched.

Odin snorted. “Sit down and have a drink,” he said, “and stop talking nonsense.”

“Father,” Thor objected, but Odin cut him off with a gesture.

“I won’t,” Frigga said. “I was at my loom, and in my gatherings I ranged far afield, and I found him. I projected myself to where he is and spoke to him. He’s alive.”

“You must have fallen asleep weaving,” Odin said dismissively. “It’s happened before.”

“That’s unkind—” Thor began.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Frigga said. “Do you understand what I said? He’s not dead.”

“He fell into the Void,” Odin said sharply. “His body is scattered across the cosmos now.”

“Mother,” Thor said, and finally it seemed he was to be allowed to complete a sentence, “I want to believe you, _we_ —” and he darted a quick glance at Odin, who looked as stony as he ever had, “—want to believe you. Don’t we, Father? Do you have any proof?”

“You’re hysterical,” Odin said flatly to Frigga, not even bothering to glance in Thor’s direction, and Thor felt a stab of frustrated irritation. “The grief has finally caught up with you. I’ll have Eir prepare—”

“I’m not hysterical,” Frigga said incredulously. “What’s gotten into both of you? What proof do I need other than my own eyes and my own word! I thought you’d be overjoyed, and instead I’m met with nothing but condescension and anger!” She looked back and forth between the two of them, confused and upset, before her gaze rested back on Odin. “You have to send me to him. You can muster enough of the dark energies for a trip there and back, me and perhaps three soldiers.”

“What about me?” Thor asked, hurt. It was finally dawning on him that his mother would not say any of this lightly, would not be saying these things unless she was sure, really truly sure, that Loki was alive, no matter how unlikely it sounded, and a terrible and wonderful hope was starting to bloom in his chest. “I’ll go as well.”

“No darling, it’s selfish of me, but I couldn’t risk losing one of you to save the other, I couldn’t—”

“Taking soldiers, losing me...Mother, is Loki in danger?”

Frigga closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

“I believe he is,” she said. “He’s locked in a room on a spacecraft and he doesn’t look well at all. Like he’s ill, or hurt. The other beings on the ship were not friendly. I felt the weave of one of them who I think was the captain, a bloodthirsty monster that made my soul shiver to feel his.”

“Do you not hear how fanciful you sound?” Odin said. “That Loki fell into the Void and was spat out healthy and whole, and then conveniently abducted by pirates who decided to just nicely lock him into a room? And you just happened across him somehow, an infinitely tiny speck running across another infinitely tiny speck in an infinitely huge universe? My dear, you have to face reality. Loki is dead.”

“He is not,” Frigga said calmly, drawing herself up. “I already failed him once, utterly, to what I thought would be my eternal shame and sadness. I will not fail him again. Send me.”

“I won’t.”

“Send me,” Frigga said again, voice harder.

Thor had no idea what his place was in all of this. He felt like perhaps he shouldn’t be here, witnessing this argument. Part of him agreed with his father that Frigga’s tale was fanciful at best and dangerous at worse. Another part of him didn’t care in the slightest if it was fanciful _or_ dangerous, and wished that he could “muster dark energies” himself, whatever that meant, and go get his brother back _right this very instant_. His palms were sweaty with it, and his pulse erratic. If there was even the smallest chance...

“It’s true then,” Frigga said to Odin after the tense silence stretched on for a moment too long. She had tears in her eyes. “You really did never love him as you claimed to.”

“Of course I did—”

“You didn’t!” she cried. “You don’t! If you did you’d be sending me to him right now with a song of thanks on your lips!”

“Silence!” Odin roared finally, snapping. “He was never right, and you know it! He was nothing but a complication and a headache from the start! He was never fit for the throne or this family and he brought us nothing but grief and misery! It is better for all of us that he is dead and that he stays that way!”

Thor felt run through by Odin’s words, and he blinked in stunned silence. This was the Odin that Thor had met for the first time in the Bifrost observatory, the one who’d banished him. The one whose echoes had had Odin saying “ _no, Loki_ ” to his son while he dangled over an abyss, the son who literally only needed to hear anything other than those words. Thor had naively thought that that Odin had been an anomaly brought on by Thor's own foolish behavior, but it seemed like he’d been mistaken. Then, he’d felt shame. Now, he felt disgust. Thor thought he might be sick.

All the color had drained from Frigga’s face. Trembling, she began fumbling at her belt, untying the knot that held her keys, the symbol of her marriage and her status in Asgard as Odin’s wife and keeper of the palace.

“You are no husband of mine,” she spat, yanking the keys free and throwing them square at Odin’s chest.

Odin’s face showed remorse, too little too late. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Frigga had already turned and begun storming from the room.

“You did this to yourself,” Thor said, and followed his mother.

*

Frigga’s anger had flamed white hot, burning through and cleansing out the turmoil of her heart until nothing was left but clear purpose. She took that purpose now and made it part of her, fashioned armor for herself from it, let it become her compass.

“Mother,” Thor called, catching up from behind her.

She turned her head and smiled but didn’t break stride. Yes. It was good that Thor should come too. She’d objected at first, back when she was confused—strange how a lifetime had happened in such a few minutes—but it was better this way.

“I’m coming with you,” he said, finally reaching her side.

“Yes, darling.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I know, darling.”

“What Father said, he—” Thor’s voice cut off, choked, and Frigga slipped her arm through her son’s and squeezed. “We’ll go to Heimdall,” he continued thickly. “I don’t know what these dark energies are that you spoke of, but if anyone else can send us it’s probably him.”

“We’re going ourselves,” Frigga said. “I just need to go get my sword.”

“How?” Thor asked.

“There are many ways to get around the universe. Your brother knew—knows—some secret ways to travel; I knew of them but not how they work, and he wouldn’t tell me. And your father and, yes, Heimdall, can brute force their way through the cosmos on occasion when they have to. But I know another way.”

“Why didn’t you just use it to begin with instead of begging Odin?”

She was silent for a moment, thinking. “It’s...different, this traveling. It’s a witch’s path. A solitary thing. I’ve only ever moved myself before, never more than one person. I’m not sure how to, actually.”

“And now you’ll move three?”

She squeezed his arm again. “For you and your brother I would move the world.”

“How do you know it’s him?” Thor asked quietly, pleading, and his grip on her arm was tight. “How do you know it’s not some trick? The universe _is_ infinitely large, the odds of running across Loki accidentally…”

“It wasn’t accidental. If your father had ever let me speak for more than an instant he might have learned something,” Frigga said tightly, “although obviously he didn’t want to hear any of it. My magic, and Loki’s, works differently than his. It’s a magic of weaving. The strands of fate and reality, of non-reality—dreams and fears and everything else intangible—everything, it all comes from the wheel of the Norns themselves. My weave is tied to Loki’s as tightly as it’s tied to yours. When I was gathering, your brother was wholly occupying my thoughts, and as I let myself roam freely I must have subconsciously followed the pull that was already there. And once I found him...Darling, there was no mistaking him for anyone else. The weave doesn’t lie.”

“Oh,” Thor exhaled. “Did I learn about that in lessons? Was I supposed to learn about that? Because I didn't.”

That drew a laugh out of her, light and unexpected, and suddenly she felt like everything was going to be okay.

They raided the armory. Frigga put on actual armor, a gleaming breastplate and arm guards, and fastened her short sword at her hip. Two daggers in each boot, and a handful more into a dimensional pocket—a tiny wrinkle of the weave. Thor already had Mjolnir but he took several more weapons as well.

“Just in case,” Thor said, shrugging, when Frigga raised an eyebrow at the second axe he’d hung from his belt.

“We’ll travel from here,” Frigga said. “Let me show you.” She held the hem of her skirt up between two hands. “My skirt is the weave of the universe. We’re at my right hand. Loki is at my left. You might think that the fastest way to get from one hand to the other is to walk across my skirt. However.” She drew her hands together, until they touched, folding the fabric. “It’s not.”

“You fold the weave.”

“Exactly,” Frigga said with a smile, and Thor smiled back at her, huge and sunny. Her beautiful boy. She loved him so much. She held out her hand and he took it. “We might need to hit the ground fighting.”

“I was born fighting. Are you ready?” Thor said, still smiling.

“No. Are you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Perfect. Let’s rescue our lost boy.”

*

Thor didn’t know what to call the method his mother was using to transport them. Space folding? Thread hopping? Whatever it was called, it was the oddest sensation he’d ever experienced. His hand was still in Frigga’s and it was the only piece of him that felt anchored. The rest of him spooled out until he was a thread himself. For some strange timeless amount of time he was aware of all the other threads around him, weaving around and through each other until they were all hopelessly intertwined; he was one of them, intertwined himself, and there was his mother, running alongside him. Vainly, he searched for Loki’s thread, but he didn’t know what to look for. Frigga did though, and with a sharp tug Thor felt himself being drawn through the weave like he was being pulled by a needle.

Once, he felt like he was slipping. He suddenly couldn’t feel the anchor of his mother’s hand in his anymore, and the tug grew weaker, and he felt himself start to become lost, falling downward through the strands of reality to he knew not where. He wasn’t panicking, not yet, but if he’d had a heart it might have fluttered.

But then Frigga caught him. Suddenly his anchor was back, strong and secure, his mother’s love enveloping him and drawing him back upwards. 

Coming back together was like being poured into a vessel all at once, and he staggered a bit before he was able to right himself.

Frigga was already holding one of her daggers up in a guard position, and she put a finger to her lips when he opened his mouth to speak. Thor took in his surroundings: a metal corridor with thin carpeting, one end taking a sharp turn to the right, and the other opening up into what appeared to be a fairly sizeable room, although it was hard to tell from here. Frigga inclined her head towards the room. Thor loosened Mjolnir on his belt and followed her with a blend of nervous excitement and anticipation. The prospect of a good fight was always thrilling, but more thrilling still was the idea that at the end his brother might be waiting to greet him.

*

“Maw. How much longer?”

“Not long at all, my lord Thanos.” Maw’s voice was high pitched and lilting, almost pleasant.

A long, broken moan cut through the air; it source was a chair with a man shackled to the arms, his head lolling, long dark hair falling into his face.

“No more,” he slurred out, his voice thick, “n’more…”

“Again,” Thanos instructed.

“My lord,” Maw said, pointing. 

A woman had appeared at the entrance to the bridge. Her hair tumbled in a fall of curls nearly to her waist, and her eyes flashed fire. She raised her chin defiantly. 

“It is the same presence I felt before,” Maw said.

“Take care of our guest,” Thanos said, his lip curling, pointing to the man in the chair. “I’ll handle this.”

Thanos strode towards the woman. She was armed and armored. He was a mountain on legs, a hulking monstrosity of a man, and had no need of either. Usually he inspired the sort of fear that others could only dare dream to. 

He narrowed his eyes at her. “How did you get in here? Who are you—”

“Come and find out,” the woman said, unafraid. Her lip rose in a delicate sneer. She backed away farther into the corridor, out of sight of the bridge, and Thanos followed.

Frowning, but not yet looking nervous, Thanos rounded the corner and reached for her. His hand encountered nothing, and he overbalanced and lost his footing for a mere instant. That instant was all it took for a hammer to come sailing through the air and send him the rest of the way to the floor, pinning him there completely unable to move.

A large blond man appeared at his side. Crouched down and smiled cheerfully.

“Hello,” he said. “I believe you have something of ours.”

Thanos had only a second to feel the first twinges of fear before the man caved his head in with an axe. 

“Come on,” Frigga said, beckoning to Thor. “There’s at least one more of them.”

Thor picked Mjolnir up lightly and stepped over the ruin of Thanos’s skull. He set the hammer to spinning and took off flying to the bridge. Frigga was hot on his heels. She drew her short sword as she ran. Only half her mind was on her surroundings—the other half was on Loki’s weave. He was vibrating, pulling her to him. She could feel his fear and pain. If only she could fly like Thor she’d be there already.

She burst onto the bridge, taking everything in in an instant. Her eyes were drawn first to Loki, bound to a chair, his head sagging—then to Maw, the tall thin one, who had his arms outstretched towards the ceiling, thrumming with seidr—then Thor, pinned to the ceiling by a metal beam, struggling yet unable to free himself.

Before Frigga could move, two more heavily armed people appeared at the other entrance to the bridge: a woman with the upper half of her face painted black, and a man with a winged hood.

“Get her,” Maw said coldly. He flicked his fingers and sent a handful of projectiles hurtling towards Frigga.

It was nothing for Frigga to shift her focus to the weave of Maw’s seidr and pull a strand at the edge of it. His projectiles changed course, sweeping around her in a long arc to veer off to the side. The painted woman and the hooded man didn’t even have time to cry out before the spikes buried themselves in their necks and they went down gurgling.

Maw cried out in anger and twisted his hand; the metal beam pinning Thor twisted as well and made Thor roar.

Frigga’s mouth thinned into a hard line and she tightened her grip on her sword. Three down, one to go. If this seidr weaver thought he could stand between her and her sons, he was sadly mistaken.

“Loki, darling,” she said loudly. “Can you free yourself at all?”

Loki moaned but didn’t move. The edges of his weave were frayed and rough, snarled. Frigga ached to take him into her arms and take him away from here.

“Mother!” Thor cried out.

Maw was snarling and calling a staff to his hand. It was the same one she’d seen Loki clutching in his cell.

“Time to work for me,” Maw said.

“I don’t think so,” Frigga said, her lips curving in a wicked smile.

She felt the weave holding Thor pinned to the ceiling. It was a good one, nicely done and very tight, and it would take her longer than she wanted to tease out a thread. So, instead, she cut it. It wasn’t something she did often—it was messy, and frequently broke other threads as collateral damage—but she didn’t like the look of that staff and wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Thor tore free of the metal beam like it was made of butter, and sent Mjolnir hurtling at the staff, knocking it out of Maw’s hand. Maw hissed and sent spikes flying in Thor’s direction.

“You stupid little children. You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Maw said. “We are the chosen of Thanos, the Great Titan. When he kills you, you will thank him for the privilege—”

“When he kills me?” Thor said, laughing and calling Mjolnir back to his hand. “I killed him myself five minutes ago.”

“You lie.”

“No, I smash.”

“The Great and Powerful—”

“Oh, shut it,” Frigga said. “Thor, be a dear and set your hammer on him, would you?”

“Gladly.”

Maw began calling the staff back to his hand and Thor sent his hammer flying. The handle of the staff snapped, and Maw’s arm snapped, and he howled in pain. Maw threw his other arm out, not towards the staff, but towards Loki.

Mjolnir took him square in the middle of the back on its return trip and sent him face first into the floor just as Frigga leaped on him with a fierce cry. He would _not_ hurt Loki anymore, she wouldn’t allow it, and her arm rose in fury and her sword came down on his neck. And again. And again. And then there was no more neck to come down on, and she fell away, chest heaving.

“Stupid little children?” She spat at Maw’s lifeless body. “I have arse hairs older than you are.”

“MOTHER!” Thor squawked, but Frigga was already striding towards Loki, still bound to the chair.

He looked terrible. Worse than he had in the cell. His hair was lank and greasy, hanging over his face in long dirty pieces. His skin looked waxy and gray, pale, sweaty—except for his eyes, which were like two dark bruises in his face. He’d lost twenty pounds, if not more; his cheekbones stood out in stark relief and his clothes hung off his too-thin frame. He cringed away as they drew nearer, the shackles cutting angry red lines into his skin as he twisted his wrists futilely.

“Dear gods,” Thor choked out.

“Don’t touch me!” Loki cried out, his eyes wild and unseeing. He tried to bring his knees to his chest, but they fell back to the ground; tried to twist his head away but there was nowhere for him to go.

Frigga’s throat closed in grief. It was her mistakes that had led to this. She should have seen that Loki was cracking under the stress before he fell...should have noticed...she’d been too distracted by Odin’s fall into the Sleep to realize that the facade of control Loki was putting up was just that...her fault that he was here, now, like this…

“This is all my fault,” Thor said, his voice thick.

“No it isn’t, darling, it’s mine,” Frigga said, blinking her tears away. “I’ve failed all of us. But maybe I can start to set things right. Break his cuffs, quickly, I don’t know if anyone else is coming.”

Thor struck the metal from Loki’s wrists with Mjolnir. Loki fell out of the chair in his haste to scramble away.

“Don’t touch me!” he cried out again, his voice scratchy and raw. “Don’t...don’t...”

“It’s us, darling,” Frigga said, stepping towards him with her hand out placatingly. “We’ve come for you.”

Loki slapped her hand away, shaking. Thor stepped in and Loki lashed out at him too. He was snarling, his eyes still wild, like he was a caged animal. Like he didn’t recognize them at all. Perhaps he didn’t.

Frigga laid her hand on Loki’s arm and he raised his hand to strike her, but Thor caught it, and then the two of them were struggling.

“Brother, it’s us,” Thor pleaded.

“Hold him still,” Frigga said.

Loki was a spitting ball of rage and fear, but he was clearly weakened, and Thor didn’t have much trouble subduing him. He got his arms around Loki from behind and just held him in a big bear hug while Loki tried to kick him and thrash. Frigga stepped up and laid her hands on Loki’s head while he bared his teeth at her.

His mind was so scrambled, her poor boy. She didn’t know what they’d been doing to him, exactly, but his brain was in complete disorder. She felt around the snarled mess of his weave until she found the strand she was looking for and gave it a gentle tug.

Loki went suddenly limp in Thor’s hold, and shook his head like he was clearing away cobwebs. When he looked back up at Frigga, his eyes finally _saw_ her, and his face began to crumple.

“Mama?” he croaked.

“It’s me,” Frigga said, no longer trying to hide the tears that streaked down her face.

Thor let go and Loki stumbled into her arms and she held him tight to her breast, stroking his hair while he clung to her desperately. Thor wrapped his arms around both of them and wet their hair with his own tears. Frigga gave herself five breaths to hold her boys and calm her thundering heart.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

“But—” Thor started. “Father—you said—”

“ _My_ home,” Frigga said. “Asgard isn’t a home any longer.”

“Vanaheim?”

Frigga steeled herself and hugged Loki tighter. Until she’d brought Thor to this place she’d never transported another person before, and there had been a terrifying moment on the journey where she thought she’d made a catastrophic mistake. Now they’d be one more. She could only offer her plea to the universe that this was going to work at all.

“Vanaheim,” she said, smiling.

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the kind words on chapter 1!
> 
> I kind of want to push this out faster than 5000 word chapters will allow, so I think they're gonna be a little shorter from now on so you guys can get to read them quicker <3

Loki couldn’t stand, so Thor carried him. He hooked one arm under Loki’s knees and wrapped the other around his shoulders, and Loki fell limply against his chest, his eyes drooping shut. His brother weighed no more than a feather. Thor wished he could kill Thanos all over again for what he had done. He cradled Loki gently in his arms, far gentler than he had ever treated him before. He realized sadly how often his hands had been used to hurt Loki rather than help him like this, and resolved that the future would be different. His brother was restored to him, and Thor would not hurt him again if he could help it.

“Mother,” Thor said, pointing with his chin towards the ceiling. The place Maw had pinned him was starting to become weak and crumble, and it looked like any minute there would be a hull breach.

“Just a moment,” Frigga said. She picked the staff up off the floor, the one that Maw had been trying to use. She hooked her arm through Thor’s and put her hand on Loki’s knee.

“Now,” she said.

It was the same sensation as the last time they traveled, only Loki’s thread was there with them now. Thor recognized it this time. His own thread was tied tightly to it, wrapped around it, inseparable. Once more he felt his mother tugging him along, and once more he felt himself begin to fall. It was different this time. The sudden disconnect more jarring. The fall a little faster. Loki was falling with him. Thor squeezed around him as tightly as he could, unwilling to let go even if letting go meant he could claw himself up. He wasn’t about to lose Loki again, especially not if there was any way that Thor could go with him. Not for the first time, Thor cursed himself for not simply jumping after Loki when he fell from the Bifrost. Coward. Craven fool. He’d not make the same mistake again. So he clung to Loki, and he waited for their mother to find them.

They sank for an age together. It was peaceful, actually. Thor thought he might not mind if he were to spend eternity like this. He and Loki, entwined and safe. The thought was almost a little startling for how novel it was. 

Thor’s lazy mind was just considering starting to examine that thought when Frigga found them. She grasped onto them, strong and sure, and hauled them up through the strata to burst back into the world.

*

In Vanaheim’s capital city there was a circle ringed with sparkling pink stone just outside the castle walls where the ground was blasted black. This was the Bifrost landing site for official state visits, and it was where Frigga brought them out.

Thor wasn’t sure quite what happened after they got there. His head was fuzzy from nearly dying while traveling, and he didn’t want to let Loki go. He remembered not letting the healers take Loki from his arms, and falling into a bed with cool sheets and the murmur of water in the background, and his brother’s sweaty head curled into his chest, and then he slept.

When he woke he found Frigga sleeping on Loki’s other side, their hands clasped. Her eyes blinked open when he stirred.

As gently as he could, Thor disentangled himself and rose, and Frigga followed. The four-poster bed was on a slightly raised platform in the middle of a long rectangular room. The white curtains draped with a pleasingly heavy weight and Thor pushed them aside to step down from the platform. 

The room had doors at either end but appeared to be open to the air on the long sides, which had pillars every few feet. Everything was cool gray stone and night-blooming jasmine vines. Several grooves cut into the floor carried flowing water through the middle of the room. There were low bookcases and comfortable looking cushioned chairs and tables at one end. It was dark outside, but Thor thought he could see forest mere steps outside of the room.

“The walls are a forcefield,” Frigga said quietly, coming to stand next to him. “They’re transparent right now, but Frey set them so that when Loki wakes up they’ll be attuned to him and he can make them as transparent or opaque as he likes. Only you and I and Loki can walk through them.”

“Oh,” Thor breathed. “That’s clever. So that he can rest without fearing someone will walk in on him?”

“Yes. Come, let’s step outside so we can talk further without disturbing him.”

They passed through the barrier with a little tingle. The night air was cool and damp and the air was filled with the sound of crickets. There were three steps running the length of the room, and they ended in grass, and then just beyond that the trees. Thor sat on the top step and Frigga sat next to him.

Thor recognized where they were. He’d been here often enough as a child, and had always loved visiting. Vanaheim’s fortress was nothing like Asgard’s palace. Where Asgard had spires of gold, Vanaheim had arches of stone, and the castle was a giant broken ring balanced on its edge with two great arms curving up into the sky. When he was younger, Thor liked to imagine the entire thing could just start rolling away down the forested hills like some giant’s hoop. At night, he would sneak over into Loki’s bed and Loki would spin them stories about it, illustrating them with his magic while he talked.

Back then, their uncle Frey would let Thor and Loki come up and take turns sitting on his throne, laughing and calling them “little kings” with his arm slung affectionately around Frigga’s shoulders.

Strange to be here now, feeling lost, and like neither he nor his brother would ever be king of anything at all.

Frigga told him what had happened while he stared out into the leafy darkness. The healers had looked at Loki the best they could with Thor clutching him so tightly and determined that the best remedy for now was sleep. Frey had given them this room. Once Loki was awake they’d have unlimited access to Vanaheim’s best medical care. They could stay as long as they needed to.

“Won’t Uncle Frey risk angering Father?” Thor said.

Frigga only shrugged. 

“He’s my brother,” she said, as though that explained everything.

“We do have our own rooms,” Frigga continued after a moment. “But...I think perhaps we should stay with your brother as much as we can. I don’t want him to be alone.”

Thor agreed with her. Privately, he thought that Loki should never have to be alone ever again.

*

Loki slept for the better part of a week.

He woke fitfully here and there. When he did, he would bolt upright, flailing, his eyes unseeing, and only calm when Thor sat down next to him and wrapped his arms around him. _I’m here, you’re safe, nothing can hurt you,_ Thor would murmur until Loki collapsed against him and let Thor lay him gently back down in the bed. Thor and Frigga took turns sitting by his bedside. They’d moisten cloths and drip water into Loki’s mouth, mop his brow, hold his hand. Frigga would put her hands on Loki’s head and weave her magic. She told Thor she was “untangling his weave,” whatever that meant, and that it would take a very long time.

Thor visited his own room once. It was smaller. A standard bedchamber, comfortably furnished. He changed from his armor and left his weapons there. Left his cape spread neatly on the bed, Mjolnir resting on top of it. That was the only time he was there. The rest of his hours were spent at Loki’s bedside or eating with his mother and his uncle. At night, he slept at Loki’s side, ready to soothe his nightmares when they came.

Frigga spent many hours in Loki’s room, but she spent many with her brother as well, talking about Thor knew not what, and except for that first night she slept in her own room.

The first time Loki woke up, _really_ woke up, was during one of the rare moments he was alone. Thor and Frigga had just eaten lunch with Frey. Frigga disappeared off with him and Thor went back to Loki’s room. He had been planning on reading a book with Loki tucked up against his side like he had for the past three days, and when he entered the room he expected to see the familiar lump under the covers. But instead Loki was awake, and sitting up on the edge of the bed, and staring out into the trees.

“Brother,” Thor said cautiously, then immediately kicked himself. The last time he’d called Loki that Loki had screamed at him— _”I’m not your brother”_ —nonsense words at the time.

Loki didn’t scream though. He blinked and looked over to Thor.

“We’re on Vanaheim,” Loki said. His throat still sounded scratchy.

“Yes.”

Thor moved slowly towards the bed. He didn’t know what to do. What to say. Didn’t know what had been done to Loki or where they stood now as brothers. Hated that he felt so unsure about something that had felt like the one enduring truth of his life.

“Can I sit next to you?” Thor asked.

Loki blinked at him slowly. “It’s not like you to ask.”

“I’ve changed.”

Loki looked back out to the trees and twisted the blankets in his hands. “We all have.”

Thor sat next to him and leaned over til their shoulders touched. Loki shuddered.

“What happened?” Loki whispered.

Slowly, giving him every opportunity to pull away, Thor took Loki’s hand and laced their fingers together.

“Mother found you while she was weaving,” Thor said. “And we came and got you.”

“Got me?”

“You’d been captured. They were doing terrible things to y—” Thor choked up. “We killed them, and brought you here.”

“They’re dead?” Loki said, his voice shaking.

“Dead,” Thor said firmly. “I killed the big one myself.”

Loki’s breath left him all in a gust and his shoulders sagged. Thor resisted the urge to cradle him the way he had been for the past week.

“Why here and not Asgard?” Loki asked after a moment.

“Well,” Thor said, and frowned. “We...that is...we won’t be going back to Asgard. At least not for a long time. Father—” Thor took a deep breath. He wasn’t about to tell Loki the awful things that Odin had said. They still twisted horribly in Thor’s gut. He didn’t know if he’d ever tell Loki at all, actually. “Father and Mother got into an argument. She took off her keys and threw them at his face.”

“Oh. Thor?”

Loki’s voice was weak, and his hand in Thor’s was so thin and sharp. Like the bones of a bird. Thor was afraid he might crush him.

“Mm?”

“You’re not mad at me?”

Thor didn’t resist this time; he pulled Loki into his embrace and held him fast. Loki went with a grateful sigh and pressed his cheek to Thor’s chest.

“No,” Thor said. “But we can talk later. I think you need to rest again.”

*


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s been two weeks since Loki woke,” Thor said, frowning, “and yet he has told us nothing of what happened to him.”

“Patience, dearheart,” Frigga said. She smoothed her skirt over her knees while Thor paced. Loki had just gone with several of the healers into a private room. Thor had tried to accompany them, but one of the healers had stopped him with a gentle hand on the chest, and Loki had given both of them an unreadable look before the door closed behind him.

“They said it would take time,” Frigga continued. “Your brother has been through so much. He may not want to talk about it at all for awhile. And you mustn’t press him.”

“But—”

“Let him tell you in his own time,” Frigga said firmly.

Thor huffed and kicked the foot of the couch she was sitting on.

“We need to follow his lead,” Frigga said. She stared at the door to the room Loki was in like she could see through it if she tried hard enough. “I think Loki has been in pain for longer than we even knew.”

“What do you mean?” Thor asked.

“Whatever led him to jump in the first place,” Frigga said quietly. The words were an effort to speak into existence.

Thor slumped down next to her and dragged his hand down his face.

“I’ve thought about it every single day since it happened,” Thor finally said after a few moments of silence. “Why he did it. How I could have stopped it. I never realized he was so unhappy.”

“He hid it from me too,” Frigga said, taking Thor’s hand. “We’ll do better now.”

“How can we if he won’t talk to us?”

“He will. We just need to keep being here for him, even when he tries to push us away. Especially when he tries to push us away. Don’t let him, Thor.”

Thor sighed and squeezed her hand.

When Loki finally came back out, Thor leapt to his feet and rushed to offer his arm. Scowling, Loki pushed him away. Thor turned to Frigga and raised his eyebrow at her and she felt the corner of her mouth lift in a smile. She hadn’t meant it quite so literally.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” Loki said. “They didn’t do anything at all to my feet.”

The cavalier way that Loki sometimes talked about what happened to him always made Frigga's heart drop. This time, despite his bravado he only made it two steps before he hunched over in pain, his hand flying to his lower back. Thor was at his side again in an instant.

“Alright, alright,” Loki muttered, taking Thor’s arm and leaning on him.

Frigga rose and came over to frame Loki’s face with her hands and kiss his forehead and he sighed and closed his eyes. She still felt so guilty she thought she might die of the shame of it all, but at the same time it filled her heart with such love to see her two boys, together, arm in arm. She smiled at Loki and patted his cheeks.

“My lady,” the healer said, coming out of the room behind Loki. “A word?”

Thor and Loki started off on their halting journey back down the hallway to Loki’s room, and Frigga stayed behind with the healer. Alva. The one who had been the most perturbed that Thor would not relinquish Loki when they’d arrived. She had a long dark braid pulled over one shoulder and a severe face.

“Prince Loki’s body is healing as well as it may,” Alva said. “He will require our care for awhile longer, but he should have no lasting physical injury.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in your voice,” Frigga said.

Alva pursed her lips. “His mind is another story entirely,” she said. “I fear that it will require more than we can provide him. He is going to need your unwavering support. I need to know that you’re prepared for how long and hard it will be. You and Prince Thor both. He will need you.”

“I understand,” Frigga said.

*

One side of Loki’s room butted up against the wooded part of the palace grounds, but the other opened into a more manicured park. There were benches overhung by bowers of wisteria, and fountains, and gravel paths.

Loki sat on a bench and turned his face up towards the sun. Thor sat on the edge of a fountain and studied him in a way he never really had before in the past, back when Loki's presence was a thing he took for granted. Loki was still much too thin, but his eyes looked less bruised now, and his hair was finally clean. He'd given up trying to straighten it and fell in messy waves around his face. He had taken to wearing a pair of loose soft leggings and an even looser green tunic with a cowled neck. When he wrapped all the excess fabric around him it made him look even smaller. Thor suspected he didn’t want to feel any sort of constraint or binding on him. All the softness also highlighted how sharp his features had become, all chin and nose and cheekbones. Thor found himself wanting to rub his thumbs on those cheekbones, feel just how sharp they had become, reassure himself that Loki was still real and not just a hallucination born of desperate hope.

“You don't have to sit with me,” Loki said, his eyes still closed. “I'm sure you have something else you'd rather be doing.”

Truth be told, Thor was feeling slightly antsy. He wasn't used to this slower lifestyle that healing required; he himself had only been seriously injured twice and he'd been a terrible patient both times, not following any of the healer's recommendations for recovery. He didn't like being apart from Loki right now, though, and he definitely didn't want him to be alone.

“There's nowhere else I'd rather be right now,” Thor said.

Loki scoffed and opened his eyes. He studied Thor with careful consideration and Thor did his best not to fidget. Loki's gaze was intense nowadays.

“You haven't asked me about anything yet,” Loki said finally. “I know it must be eating you alive. Why I did it. Any of it.”

Thor blew out a harsh breath. Had Loki been listening in on his conversation with Frigga? Or had he just decided to pick today of all days to start broaching the subject?

“You weren't yourself,” Thor said, trying to choose his words carefully. Apparently they were the wrong ones.

“Are you saying I was mad?” Loki said, a dangerous glitter in his eye and an edge to his voice. “Because I assure you I wasn't.”

“You were in pain,” Thor said. “And had no one to help you bear it. But now you have me, and mother, and—”

“So you think I'm weak, then,” Loki said, cutting him off. He clenched his jaw and looked past Thor's shoulder into the distance. “That I can't do anything myself. I guess it's true isn't it, I got to be king for a day and all I succeeded in doing was proving I was precisely the failure everyone already thought me to be—”

“Brother,” Thor said, cutting him off in turn. He rose from his perch on the fountain's edge and came to kneel in the grass between Loki's feet. Loki looked at him in surprise, and Thor took both of his hands and enfolded them in his own. “Loki.” He started intently into Loki's eyes, willing him to feel the earnestness he was trying to convey. “I never do _anything_ myself.”

“What are you talking about,” Loki said flatly.

“No matter what I do, I have the support of everyone around me. Mother and—Mother. My friends. Even Heimdall.” Thor squeezed Loki’s hands. “ _You._ Even when I’m alone I’m never really alone because I know I have you all there to help me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Loki said, but his voice was soft, and when he blinked there was wetness in his eyes.

“Maybe, but it’s true. As long as I know I have you behind me I feel like I can face anything.”

Loki blinked back more tears. “You’re a ridiculous, unfathomable creature,” he said, his voice shaking. “I tried to _kill_ you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Thor said gently.

Loki scoffed and tried to pull away, but Thor held fast to his hands.

“If you had tried to kill me I’d be dead,” he insisted.

“And you’re not even angry at all?” Loki said. “Not the tiniest bit?”

“I told you, I’ve changed.”

Loki let out one tearful laugh, and Thor finally let go of his hands so Loki could scrub at his face.

“You got better and I got worse,” Loki said, sniffling.

Some compulsion had Thor putting his arms around Loki’s waist. He pressed his cheek into the bunchy soft folds of Loki’s tunic and held him tight. Loki’s hands came up to his shoulders for a moment, and then he put his arms around Thor’s neck and rested his face on Thor’s head.

“I’m just glad you’re back,” Thor said.

“Am I?” Loki said softly. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Thor pulled back to look up at Loki’s face. 

“You’re Loki, and you’re my brother, and those things haven’t changed.”

“A great many things have changed about me, brother.”

Thor smiled then, he couldn’t help himself.

“What?” Loki asked suspiciously.

“You called me ‘brother,'” Thor said, still smiling. It was the first time Loki had said it. He wasn’t expecting the simple joy it brought him.

“Ridiculous creature,” Loki muttered again, but it was half-hearted, and he didn’t protest when Thor hugged him, and his arms around Thor’s neck were just as tight as the ones Thor had around his waist.


	4. Chapter 4

A few days later, Loki woke up in the best mood he’d been in in a very long time. He tended to keep his forcefield walls opaque enough to not be see-through, but just translucent enough to let some light filter in. The sunrise was pink this morning, and with his white bed drapes pulled shut it made a peaceful, rosy little cave. Birdsong filtered through, and the quiet murmur of the water running along the grooves in the floor. His pillow was soft and his blankets were just right, and his body didn’t hurt, and his brain was blessedly quiet.

He showered and washed his hair with soap that smelled of roses, then wrapped himself in a light linen robe. A soft rapping at the door that connected to the rest of the palace revealed his mother, who smiled at him and kissed his cheek, then wordlessly took his hand and led him to the soft upholstered chairs at the other end of the room. He sat on the rug with his feet folded under him as she combed his hair and braided it back at the temples, humming a little song she used to sing him when he was a child. He rested his head on her knee afterwards, and she stroked his head.

He’d not said a word or had a thought all day. It was blissfully perfect.

He started to doze off. He felt like he was drifting down through layers of honey. In his partially asleep state he thought he could feel strong arms around him, enveloping him, sinking with him. It felt familiar. Like maybe he had done it before, somewhere. It felt safe. He felt...loved.

Of course his perfect morning couldn’t last.

He startled awake when Thor entered, and blinked sleepily at him. Thor was a broad-shouldered dark shape against the brightness of the sunlit wall, and as he got closer his features resolved. His hair became gold, his eyes blue and tender. Loki found himself smiling at him involuntarily, his heart warm.

Then he registered the look of worry on Thor’s face, and he sat up straight, the cobwebs falling away from his brain.

“I was just speaking with Uncle Frey,” Thor said. He tapped a scroll that Loki hadn’t noticed before against his palm. There was a broken wax seal on it. Angling his head, Loki made out the impression. Odin’s twin ravens. His heart sank. 

Thor had told him that Odin and Frigga had argued, but other than that, Loki had purposefully not thought of the old man. Every time his thoughts wandered there, he forcefully redirected them. The hurt was too large.

“Let me see,” Frigga said, holding out her hand for the scroll. Loki closed his eyes as she read it and folded his hands in his lap. He felt his thoughts start to go sideways. He tried to drag them back but the pull was too strong this time. Odin’s face filled his vision. _“No, Loki.”_ Falling and falling and falling and—

Pain and fear and—

Thanos’s voice. _“Again”_ —

He bit his lip to keep from whimpering. His heart was racing and his whole body was tense. Desperately, he thought of Alva. She’d been working with him to help when he got like this. Purposefully, he began relaxing the muscles in his body one by one. His feet. His calves. His thighs. Up and up. As he did he repeated a mantra to himself.

He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t alone. Thor had said so. Thor was here, and his mother as well. He fought to keep his breathing ordered. This was real. This wasn’t one of Maw’s visions. Maw was dead. Thanos was dead. This was real. He was safe.

“You fought about me, didn’t you?” Loki said when he felt like he could speak. Frigga was still looking at the letter, and she gave his shoulder a squeeze. Thor only looked at him sadly, and Loki turned his face away. He couldn’t meet those eyes.

“Your father—” Frigga started.

Loki snapped. “He’s _not my father_ ,” he snarled. His hands curled into fists and he beat them on his thighs. He lurched to his feet and stumbled, doubled over for a moment in pain. The wound in his lower back from Proxima’s three-pronged spear had yet to heal completely.

Thor was there taking hold of his elbow before he could even straighten up. An old, foolish part of him wanted to shove Thor away. Prove that he could do at least one thing for himself. Another part, the one that catalogued every touch and glance his brother had ever given him, wanted nothing more than to just fall into Thor’s arms and collapse against his chest and stay there until anything made sense again. Until he was back to normal.

 _You’ll never be back to normal,_ he thought. _Get used to it._

He still wasn’t quite used to Thor being so solicitous. The puffed up blowhard Thor had become in recent years seemed to have completely disappeared. To see Thor having come into himself now, though, without Loki, made him jealous that it wasn’t he who had brought it out of Thor. That it was someone or something else who had managed it, despite Loki’s best efforts. It also made him jealous that Thor had taken hardship and spun it into gold, whereas Loki had taken hardship and spun it into nothing but shit heaped upon shit.

And yet Loki couldn’t help but be happy about the change in Thor, too. He’d always known this man was there inside his brother; he’d grown up with him, after all. Thor had been nothing but an unwavering rock of support since they’d plucked him off that gods-bedamned ship and Loki couldn’t help but bask in his warmth, even if it sometimes galled him.

He didn’t collapse against Thor’s chest now the way he wanted to, but after holding Thor off for a moment with an upraised hand, he let Thor take his arm and help him to a chair. Thor’s hand lingered on him as he pulled away. Loki might not have noticed except that he was always exquisitely attuned to such things.

Thor took the chair next to his and angled himself so that their knees were almost touching and Loki bridged the gap, nudging them together, and Thor nudged him back. Another point in Loki’s mental tally.

Frigga regarded both of them seriously and then spoke to Loki.

“You were right, darling,” she said. “Odin and I did not see eye-to-eye on the manner of your rescue. He couldn’t keep your return secret, however. But he has also not made our private affair public. His official story is that he himself ordered a rescue party, and that you are recuperating on Vanaheim away from the public eye. He wishes for you to release a public statement assuring the people of your continued improving health.”

Loki barked out a laugh, and Thor put a hand on his knee.

“Didn’t see eye-to-eye?” Loki said, his voice a bit high. “He practically threw me off the Bifrost himself. Oh. Oh. This is why you and Thor came, and not a battalion. Why there was no Heimdall. Gods. _Gods._ ” He was struggling to breathe, and he clutched at Thor’s hand. “He knew I was alive and he left me to die.”

It was all going sideways again. He felt himself starting to slip, his vision starting to narrow. But then Thor was gathering Loki into his arms. He was on the ground between his knees again, pulling him down, holding him close.

“Breathe,” Thor murmured, rubbing circles on Loki’s back. “Breathe.” Loki was shaking. He couldn’t stop shaking. “Breathe.” Loki latched onto Thor’s voice and clung to his shoulders. Dragged himself back from the endless spiral he was swirling into. He hated being so weak.

“I always knew he didn’t love me,” Loki choked out, “but I never thought he hated me. I thought—I thought—”

“You never have to see him again,” Thor said. “You never have to please him again. You don’t owe him anything.”

Thor held him, his arms strong yet gentle. Frigga touched him lightly on the top of the head.

“Darling,” she said softly. “Your weave is so terribly tangled. Would you let me try?” She held her hand out in question.

Loki nodded against Thor’s chest. Frigga laid both hands on his head. He felt the questing thread of her seidr brushing against his. She flitted lightly around, touching, tugging, smoothing. His jagged thoughts quit whirling around and slicing him to ribbons and settled down, and his heartbeat slowed from its rapid tattoo. He took a deep long breath and exhaled on a sigh.

“It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do right now,” Frigga said. “I don’t know what they did to you, my love, but you’re so snarled up I can’t even find where to start setting it all straight.”

“The staff,” Loki said dully. “It alters your mind.” It was the first time he’d been able to say it out loud and he shuddered.

Frigga kissed his hair. “I’m going to see Frey,” she said.

“I’m staying here,” Thor said.

*

Thor called for food to be brought for them and he watched Loki like a hawk to made sure he ate. Loki’s appetite had always been touchy in times of stress, and he couldn’t afford to lose any more weight than he already had. If Thor had his way, Loki would do nothing but eat stacks of cakes dripping in butter and honey all day long, and quench his thirst with fresh milk, until his cheeks filled in and his hipbones disappeared and his eyes learned how to smile again.

Loki looked like he was a million miles away as he picked through his breakfast. Thor counted everything he ate. Half an apple with perhaps a teaspoon of honey. Two bites of buttered bread. A spoonful of soft boiled egg lifted up and then set down again untouched.

“Have some of this,” Thor said, putting some little savory sausages on his plate. “They have sage and I think fennel in them.” Loki ate one, which Thor counted as a win.

Thor coaxed Loki into getting dressed afterwards, and then for a walk in the garden. It looked like it might rain, so Thor surreptitiously cleared the clouds out and let the sun shine down on them. Loki didn’t take his arm, but he walked so close to Thor that their shoulders kept brushing, and Thor found himself knocking gently into Loki a little more often than was strictly necessary, and smiling when Loki knocked into him in return.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Loki said after the silence had stretched on for a little while. There had been nothing but the crunch of their feet on the gravel and the distant call of birds since they’d ventured out.

“Do what?”

“Follow me around like a nursemaid.”

“I’m not your nursemaid, although now that you mention it, maybe I should get you one.”

The glare Loki leveled at him made him smile.

“Truly, though,” Thor said, becoming more serious, “I wish only to take care of you.”

“Take care of me?” Loki said, though the way he said it sounded rhetorical. “You never wanted to before.”

“I never knew you needed it before,” Thor said. “Now I do.”

Loki scoffed. He held out his hand and let it drag against the leaves of a bush that overhung the path they were on.

“I wouldn’t have let you before,” Loki said.

“I know.”

Thor itched to put his arm around Loki’s waist, but he didn’t. It suddenly seemed absurd that they should have any distance between them at all. Loki should be tucked safe up against Thor’s side, where he belonged. Thor frowned. When had he started feeling this way?

“Do you wish me to leave you alone?” Thor asked after a moment.

“Yes,” Loki said, too quickly, then, “no...I don’t know...I...” He sighed. “...you’re just a lot,” he said finally, but low, and more to himself than to Thor.

Thor held out his hand. Loki gave him a guarded look for a moment before slipping his hand into Thor’s.

“I have somewhere to bring you today,” Thor said.

They’d walked around the gardens dozens of times in the past few weeks, but Loki had never gone beyond them. He’d simply been too weak at first. This time, Thor led him past the last hedgerow into a winding complex of small snug wooden cabins. It butted up against the healer’s wing, and each one was devoted to healing and recuperation. There were steam rooms, massage rooms, rooms where the healers worked with special crystals or hot rocks or long thin needles. The path Thor took them on brought them through the cabins and into a little outdoor grotto. A steaming pool in the middle was ringed by boulders and shaded by a red maple tree that hung out over the water. There was soft green moss and little red flowers.

“I had planned to bring you here today already,” Thor said, “before I got waylaid by Fa—by that letter. I’ll be even more happy for a soak now myself. I made sure we won’t be disturbed.”

Loki regarded the pool silently, his face a blank mask.

“What’s wrong?” Thor asked.

Loki tugged his hand back and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I didn’t bring any bathing clothes,” he said.

Thor looked at him quizzically. He was already shucking off his own clothes, pulling his tunic over his head and hopping on one leg to pull his boots off.

“Neither did I,” Thor said, shrugging. He pulled the last of his clothes off and slid into the water. “Come on, it feels wonderful.”

Loki grimaced. His hand went to the hem of his tunic, then stilled. Finally, he took a deep breath and pulled it over his head all at once, then stepped into the water as quickly as he could and immediately sank down up to his neck. He hadn’t even removed his leggings.

Thor saw the skin of his torso only for an instant, but in a flash he realized why Loki was hesitant about the hot spring.

“I’ve seen scars before,” Thor said. “You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Loki said.

“I—”

“Thor, _please_. I don’t want to talk about them, I don’t want to think about them.”

Thor let his breath out all in a rush.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d said and done the wrong things again. “I had only thought that a soak in the hot spring would be pleasant. We can leave if you want to.”

Loki’s eyes softened. “We can stay. It does feel nice.”

They sat on the rock ledge that ran around the edge of the pool. The water lapped around Thor’s armpits as he spread his arms out on the back edge and tilted his head back. He catalogued the scars he’d managed to see. One on Loki’s shoulder that looked like a healed burn. A long thin line across his chest. Three evenly spaced circles on his lower back that still looked angry and red. None of them had been there the last time he’d seen Loki’s bare skin. He hated that he didn’t know what had put them there. Hated that Loki had suffered alone. Part of him wished he hadn’t killed Thanos so quickly. That monster deserved so much worse for what he had done.

Thor had learned a little about Thanos since they’d arrived here. Frey had known the name, and he’d shared the little that he knew, mostly that Thanos had styled himself the Mad Titan and had been going world to world slaughtering half the people on each one. Thor desperately wanted to ask Loki more about Thanos, but he wouldn’t. He’d wait. Loki would tell him in time, or he wouldn’t. Thor wasn’t entitled to any pain that Loki didn’t wish to share.

Loki sighed next to him and shifted uncomfortably against the stone. Thor lifted his shoulder a little in invitation and Loki scooted over to rest his head on Thor’s arm instead of the rock. Thor found his thumb absently stroking Loki’s shoulder. It brushed against the burn scar and Loki stiffened for a moment, then relaxed back into him.

“Sorry,” Loki murmured.

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

At some point Thor realized Loki was silently crying. Loki didn’t say anything and Thor didn’t either. Thor just kept his arm around him, his thumb stroking the same path over and over again. Eventually Loki stopped, and Thor rested his cheek against the top of Loki’s damp head.

“Sometimes I’m still afraid this isn’t real,” Loki said softly. “They liked to try and trick me sometimes. Visions of freedom. Of people coming to help me. They pulled my deepest desires from my mind and used them against me.”

“I’m here,” Thor said, his heart breaking. “I’m real.”

“They used you most of all,” Loki whispered. Before Thor could recover from that revelation, Loki was already talking again. “Why couldn’t we have been like this before? It was all I ever wanted. I—”

Thor pressed a long kiss to Loki’s temple while Loki shuddered against him. He wasn’t sure if the dampness on Loki’s face was sweat or steam or more tears. He wasn’t sure what the dampness on his own face was either.

“Prove you’re real,” Loki said. He pressed against Thor’s side, pressed his face to Thor’s shoulder.

“Brother,” Thor said. “Loki. _Kærr_.”

He felt Loki inhale sharply. The word meant “beloved.” Their mother had called them that when they were small, and they’d used to call each other by the same name until they’d been scolded by a nursemaid that it was inappropriate. Thor had never meant it more than he did now.

“This could still just be my own mind,” Loki said.

“Do you really think that?”

Loki huffed out a teary little laugh.

“I almost hope that it is. I’m terrified.”

“Of what?”

“You.”

Loki lifted his head to look at Thor. His hair was curling into tight waves from the wet heat, stuck close to his head; his lashes beaded with condensation; his green eyes so bright in his pale face that they almost looked feverish. Thor was struck with the urge to kiss him. Hot on its heels was a stab of realization that Loki might want him to.

It was such an abrupt and surprising thought that Thor felt the color rise on his cheeks.

Loki moved around on the bench until he was out of the circle of Thor’s arms, but facing him, still close enough that Thor could reach out and touch him if he wanted. He let his chest rise from the water, heedless now of the scars that were visible. His gaze was intense, probing.

“Odin’s lies nearly destroyed us,” Loki said. “And my own did nothing but help him. So I will say this to you now, once, that we have no more lies between us. And if it drives you away from me, at least I’ll have done it now while I’m already broken.”

“You’re not broken—” Thor protested automatically.

Loki quieted him with a finger on his lips. “Yes I am,” he said softly. He let his finger trail down off Thor’s lips to his chin and stroke the line of his jaw once before putting his hand back in his lap. Thor’s heart knocked against his rib cage. He felt lightheaded from the steam. He knew what Loki was going to say.

“I love you,” Loki said. “I know you’ve heard me say it thousands of times. That is no lie, but the very casualness of it was.” Loki’s eyes bored into him. “I said it so often and so lightly to disguise how deep it truly ran. Runs.”

“Brother,” Thor said helplessly, unable to look away, unable to move.

“We could be more than that.” Loki’s voice was rough.

“How could you be be more?” Thor asked. Loki’s mouth turned down and he closed his eyes and let his head fall. Thor lifted his chin with two fingers. “How could you be more when you’re already everything?”

Loki’s eyes were brimming with tears and Thor leaned in and kissed each eyelid. When he pulled back, there was a single tear track down each of Loki’s cheeks, cutting a path through the dampness of the spring.

Hesitantly, feeling outside of his body and yet aware of every little thing, Thor leaned in again. His hand was on Loki’s neck, somehow, though he didn’t remember putting it there. Their foreheads brushed, and their noses, and their lips, and Loki sighed high and breathless, and then Thor pressed their lips together. Nothing had ever felt more right. His heart thundered and electricity sparked in his veins. Thor was suddenly overwhelmed. He wanted to kiss Loki, and kiss him, and kiss him again, and lift him from the water and bear him down onto the soft moss and sink into him until they had melted together. The love he felt for Loki in that moment subsumed every other emotion he had until it was all that was left and Thor thought he might burst from it.

“ _Kærr_ ,” Thor said huskily, tightening his hold on Loki’s neck and holding their foreheads together.

Loki was laughing through his tears.

“All this time, I thought this would be the secret that killed me,” he said shakily.

Thor pulled Loki across his lap and they held onto each other with clinging arms until they could both breathe again. Loki was curled up right next to Thor’s heart and Thor never wanted him to leave.

“The private time I arranged here will be over soon,” Thor murmured after a few moments. “Could I persuade you to have lunch with me?”

“Yes, you could do that.”

*


	5. Chapter 5

“I never thought I’d be in this position,” Frigga said. She stood in Frey’s study, arms crossed, staring out the window. They were at the very top of one of the curved towers that made up the castle and she could see for leagues and leagues. Forested hills. Farmland. Villages. A bright sliver of ocean against the horizon. All the world spread out in front of her, and she felt so trapped.

“Odin’s always been a right old arse,” Frey said.

Frigga glanced back at her brother. He was leaning back in his chair, dusty booted feet up on his desk. He had half a foot on her, but they had the same build, the same curly sand-colored hair (though he kept his short), the same eyes.

“You never liked him,” Frigga said.

“How could I? He took you away from me.”

Frigga smiled at him, though her eyes and mouth were both tight. Her marriage to Odin had been one of political necessity rather than love, and Frey had always taken it harder than she had; she’d made her peace long before that that she would never get to marry for love.

“You know I wouldn’t have chosen him had I any other choice,” Frigga said. “But he was kind to me, at least.”

Frey rose and came over to take her hand. He brought her knuckles to his mouth and let his lips ghost over them.

“And that was the only thing preventing me from challenging him to a duel myself and starting some very ill-advised interrealm warfare,” he said.

“Would you start interrealm warfare now?” Frigga asked him, her look shrewd.

“If you asked it of me.”

“Sweet and foolish, as always,” Frigga said. She sighed and turned back to the window. She found herself worrying her hands together and wished she had a loom to occupy them. “I fear we’ve intruded on your hospitality too long. Odin is covering things up for now, but he has never liked being thwarted. His patience will run thin sooner or later.”

“What can he do?” Frey asked. He draped his arm over her shoulder. “He already gave his official story. What tale could he spin? That I’ve kidnapped the three of you? As if I could. You and your children are a force of nature, _kærr_.”

Frigga let herself rest her head on Frey’s shoulder for a moment and pretend that her life could ever have gone differently than it had.

“We will stay here for a little while longer, at least,” she said finally. “Loki is in no fit state to travel anywhere right now. Also, he mentioned something about that staff we brought back with us—”

*

The revelation in the hot spring had Loki half out of his mind for the rest of the day. He felt as fluttery and weightless as a butterfly, and nearly as aimless, like his mind couldn’t find a proper place to settle.

After lunch, Thor walked him to a session with Alva, where she poked and prodded with her seidr at various pieces of his internal anatomy that were still not quite right.

“Your heartbeat is erratic today,” she said, frowning. “How are you feeling?”

“As well as I can,” Loki said, trying not to laugh hysterically.

Thor wasn’t waiting for him when he emerged, which made him frown, but he’d left a page with a message. _I’ll come get you after your nap._ Loki thanked the boy and went back to his room. He always slept like a rock for several hours after a healing session. Today, his room felt bigger and emptier than it usually did. His bed seemed endlessly wide, and when he pulled the drapes shut he found himself wishing there was another body in there with him. Thor had slept next to him the entire time he’d been insensate; he had only stopped when Loki had finally come out of his delirium. Loki had been well and truly out of it for most of that time, but he had snatches of memory. Of Thor’s big warm body next to him in bed. Of coming to in the dark, internally panicking until he put an arm over Thor’s chest. He put his hand on the pillow next to him, still feeling unsettled and flighty and like his pulse was too thready, and closed his eyes and pretended that Thor was there now.

He woke to the deep golden light of late afternoon and lay there in bed for a moment. Thor would be coming back any moment. He’d walk in and Loki could smile at him, he was allowed to do that now, and Thor would smile back, and they wouldn’t argue, and Loki was allowed to touch him, and even kiss him and…

It seemed too good to be true. He blinked rapidly. Why? Why now? Because he’d been broken, changed? Why hadn’t he deserved it before? Did he have to die before being worthy of love? The old Loki gone, tossed away into an abyss, and good riddance.

 _Stop,_ he told himself firmly. _He didn’t know before. You never told him._

 _But if he felt the same way, why didn’t_ he _bring it up himself before now?_

Thor found him twisting the sheets into knots, trying not to cry.

“What is it?” Thor said gently, sitting on the edge of the bed and stilling Loki’s nervous hands with his own.

“Oh you know,” Loki said. “Everything.”

Thor laid down next to him and put his arms around him, and despite the endless chattering circles his mind was running in, Loki let himself curl into Thor’s chest.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Thor said.

Loki was silent for a long moment. He should just stay quiet, he knew. He’d told Thor his secret desires and Thor hadn’t pummeled him. He’d gotten a kiss he’d been waiting a lifetime for. He might even be able to get more. Unfortunately, he’d never been able to leave well enough alone.

“...Why are you being so good to me?”

Thor inhaled to speak but Loki kept talking.

“You never would have been like this before. And don’t try to pooh-pooh me about this. You know what we were like together before. You _know_. So just… _don’t_.”

Thor’s broad hand stroked up and down Loki’s back.

“You say “before,” but what about before that?” Thor said, his voice low and thoughtful. “We weren’t always that way. I may have come to take your presence for granted...no, I _did_ come to take your presence for granted, and for that I’m sorrier than you know...”

“Even this,” Loki said, and he heard his voice going high. “If I’d put you to the question before, you would have shut me down, or pulled rank, not... apologized to me. Why? Had I not suffered enough, then? Have I paid a sufficient price now to earn your love? Is that it?”

“Loki,” Thor said, and he sounded pained. “You don’t have to earn anything.”

“Of course I do!”

Loki tried to push away, but Thor held him fast.

“I was blind before,” Thor said, “and arrogant. And then I lost everything that was dear to me, and I realized what I’d become.”

“Your hammer, yes,” Loki said bitterly. “And then you found your worthiness between the thighs of that woman, I take it.”

“What? No. I—” Thor broke off and huffed. “I knew her for two days. Brother, were you _jealous_?”

“ _Of course I was_.”

“You’ve been half my heart for a thousand years, you little fool.” Thor somehow managed to make “fool” sound fond. “How could she ever compare to you? Sod the hammer. I lost my place in the world, and then I lost you. I thought you were _dead_. Grief has a way of changing your perspective on things.”

“Grief,” Loki said, choke-laughing. “Did you mourn?”

“Until I thought that I would die of it. Until I wished that I would.”

“Oh, Thor.”

Loki clung to Thor and shuddered. This morning seemed like it had happened a century ago. The fight drained out of him. He didn’t want to argue anymore, he just wanted to hold Thor and be held.

“I’m sorry,” Loki said. “I ruined everything. I’m so sorry.”

Thor framed Loki’s face in his hands and tilted his head until he was looking up into Thor’s face.

“I would very much like to kiss you again,” Thor said.

Loki was already leaning up into him before he was done speaking, and their mouths met in the middle. Loki had never imagined that Thor’s lips might be soft, but they were, soft and fierce and perfect. He’d wanted this for so long that he didn’t even know what to do with himself, where to put his hands, if he was allowed to deepen it. He had no idea how far Thor wanted to take it. Maybe this was it.

The insidious thought crept into Loki’s head that Thor was only humoring him. That he just hadn’t wanted to say no to the invalid. That he was throwing Loki a scrap of affection so that he wouldn’t go jump off the nearest tall object again.

 _Stop_ , he pleaded with himself. His brain felt all a-jumble. He was lost inside of it.

Thor cupped the back of his neck and Loki grabbed onto that point of physical contact as a tether. Thor was kissing him. Holding him. Determinedly, Loki shoved all the other thoughts out of his head and kissed him back.

*

Frigga rose with the dawn the next morning. When she entered Loki’s room he was still asleep. His long pale limbs and wild tumble of hair took up three quarters of the bed, and the other quarter was taken up by Thor. Thor was on his back, his breathing even, one hand resting on his own stomach and the other lightly atop one of Loki’s. She watched them for a moment, considering. She’d been watching them their whole lives, and though sometimes she hadn’t paid as much attention as perhaps she should have, she recognized this love they had. This closeness. She wondered if they recognized it themselves. 

Briefly, she thought of Frey in a honeyed summer over a millennium gone, sunlight in his hair and his eyes sparkling with mirth.

She took one of the chairs at the far end of the room and read until her boys began to stir.

Loki smiled sleepily at her and she came to sit on the edge of the bed and tuck his hair behind his ear. 

“Sorry to come in so early, dearheart,” she said. “But I think I’ve found something that might help you.”

She nodded to where she’d propped the broken scepter up against the chair she’d been sitting in.

“Frey and I examined that stone and it’s truly extraordinary. Your captors used it for ill but I believe we can use it for good.”

Loki’s face shuttered and he sat up. Thor sat up too, rubbing his eyes and laying a hand on Loki’s back.

“I don’t want it near me,” Loki said.

“I know,” Frigga said. “But the stone has no malevolence of its own. It’s merely a tool.”

She started explaining what they’d found. She and Frey had both examined the stone with their seidr, and she’d truly never come across anything nearly as powerful in her life. She was positive it had been used to snarl up Loki’s weave, and just as positive that with its help she could unsnarl it. Bring him into harmony again.

“Just so I can go back to the way I was before...all of this,” Loki said dully.

“No,” Frigga said. “It will never be like that again. Our lives before were based on a lie. I was complicit in it, and I will bear the shame of that for the rest of my life. There will be no more secrets, no more lies.” Frigga took one of Thor’s hands and one of Loki’s and held tightly to both of them. “ _None_ of us will go back to how we were before.”

“...Ok,” Loki whispered finally, staring intently at their clasped hands. “We can try.”

Thor’s eyes were intent on her.

“Are you sure this won’t harm him further?” Thor asked.

He was so devoted to Loki now. Frigga was only sad that it had taken so much to bring out what had already existed under the surface. If he and Loki been allowed to build each other up instead of being forced to compete with each other, how might their lives have been different?

“I swear it,” Frigga said.


	6. Chapter 6

Loki sat on the floor, one arm around his knees. The fingers of his other hand trailed in one of the little rivulets running through the floor. Frigga and Thor conversed softly behind him, discussing what Frigga was about to try with the staff, and Loki tuned them out. He didn’t want to think about that yellow stone. He felt the coolness of the water and imagined all the bad things inside of him draining out through his fingertips and flowing away. 

Frigga laid a gentle hand on his back.

“Ready, darling?”

Loki turned his head and met Thor’s concerned eyes for a moment. In one way Thor’s concern was touching, but in another it irritated him. He didn’t need pity. He’d survived too much for that.

“Ready.”

Loki rose and Thor tried to catch his arm, but he brushed past his brother without looking at him again.

“Where should we do it?” Loki asked. 

“Thor, dear, would you arrange the chairs?”

Thor dragged two chairs to either side of Loki’s usual chair, but angled them towards where Loki would be sitting. Loki sat stiffly in the middle one, perched right on the edge, and folded his hands in his lap and stared off into space. His lower back ached, and something ground alarmingly in his neck when he sat, but he gave no outward sign. He wasn’t that concerned about his body right now. His mind felt like a wrinkled and frayed old rug that refused to lay flat.

His mother sat at his left hand and Thor sat at his right. They shared a look over the top of his head and Loki rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” he said sharply. He wasn’t even sure what “fine” meant anymore. Whatever they were going to do couldn’t be as bad as the mental tortures Maw had designed for him. Maw. Loki realized he was clenching his jaw and purposefully relaxed it.

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better for the healers to do this?” Thor fretted.

“I don’t trust anyone with this other than myself,” Frigga said.

“Just do it,” Loki said.

Frigga took the staff and laid it across her knees. Loki looked at it out of the corner of his eye. They used to lock him in his cell with it. They would use it to call out to him until he had no other choice but to pick it up himself or go mad. And every time he touched it…

He shuddered.

Frigga put her left hand on the staff and took Loki’s hand with her right.

His mother was on the other end of the staff now, not them. His mother loved him. She did. She came for him.

_Why didn’t she come earlier, why didn’t she tell me about my parentage earlier, why did she uphold Odin’s lies, why—_

He gasped. His mind flooded with yellow light.

He felt Frigga’s seidr touching his own, and the familiar touch of the stone as well. But it was different this time. It didn’t feel forceful. It didn’t run roughshod over him. Frigga’s seidr quested gently through his weave, following the threads of himself around and around. Her touch was so delicate that he could have wept if he’d remembered what his body felt like; but he wasn’t a body right now, he was just a small patch of the fabric of the universe, and his mother was a master weaver, and she was going to set things right. He felt her love flowing into him, filling him up. How could he have ever doubted?

Dimly, he heard Thor’s voice, though it was hard to make out.

“...supposed to happen...mother...”

A sigh rippled through his entire being as Frigga undid a year’s worth of deliberate tangling, and then kept going. Further back. Finding little pockets of loose frayed thread that had been there for so long he hadn’t even realized they existed, and making them as tight and strong as new.

“...going to fall…” Thor’s voice said from a million miles away.

And then Loki gasped again, because suddenly Thor was _right there_. His mind crowded into the same space where Loki and Frigga were, and he was so _big_ and loud, and clumsy—and yet also good, and dear, and beloved—and Loki tried to push him back and away, but Thor latched onto him instead and for an instant the stone flared—and all was yellow, and all was _Thor_ —

In that instant, for only an instant, their minds connected completely.

When Loki came back to his body, he was crying. He was on the floor, and Thor was cradling him, and he was weeping freely into Thor’s tunic.

He’d felt it all. Every emotion that Thor felt towards him, good and bad. All of his grief and worry and fear. All of his love.

Any doubts that Loki had ever had about the way Thor felt for him were banished. He wasn’t merely tolerated. He wasn’t second best or a second choice. He wasn’t pitied. He’d felt Thor’s love for him, and its name was cut by the same soul-deep knife that had carved grooves into his own bones.

He heard the door close and realized that Frigga had quietly gotten up and left. He struggled upright in Thor’s lap, then turned to wrap his legs and arms both around him and bury his face in Thor’s neck.

“Did you feel it?” Loki said against the skin of his brother’s throat.

“Yes,” Thor breathed into his ear.

“I never knew,” Loki said, tears still running down his face.

“Neither did I,” Thor said, “not truly.” 

Thor’s arms around Loki were tight and desperate, his fingers digging into Loki’s ribs like he could lace his fingers between the bones and hold him there forever. Loki wanted him to. He heard himself make a noise and didn’t even know what it was. A sigh, a laugh, a sob? A millennium of pent up stress, exiting his body on a little puff of air?

He hung off Thor’s neck and melted into his chest. He felt like he’d been reborn.

He felt like _himself_ for the first time in… Maybe for the first time, full stop. This was the first time in his life he’d known everything about himself, after all. Even when he was a child, he’d always felt off, like something about him wasn’t right; that maybe if he just tried hard enough, searched long enough, that he'd find himself somewhere waiting for himself; that he was perpetually in the shadows, and didn’t even know where to find the light. But now he was in the light, and Thor was there with him, and it was beautiful. There were no more secrets, not the things that had been kept hidden from him, nor the things he had hidden himself. And he was free from the bonds of his father, and from anyone else who would seek to control his life.

His mind had felt so trapped before. Constricted. Running in tight little circles it was nearly impossible to get out of. He felt so free now he thought if he leapt from the ground he might be able to fly. The Loki of an hour ago seemed no more than a bad memory.

“Did it work?” Thor asked.

Loki started laughing. It bubbled out of him, light and giddy. He sat up straight in Thor’s lap and grabbed him by the ears and planted a big messy kiss right on his lips. He pulled back, grinning so wide that Thor started smiling too.

“Yes, I really think it did,” Loki said.


	7. Chapter 7

The change in Loki was immediate and thorough. There was a lightness to him now that was all the more apparent for how weighed down he had been before. He was visibly unburdened, happy, flitting around the castle with an easy smile and a ready laugh. He engaged the servants in a way he hadn’t done since they’d arrived. He took meals in the main hall. His eyes sparkled. His shoulders were back and proud. His wit sang, his silver tongue on full and elegant display, and though it was as incisive as ever it was never at anyone’s expense.

Thor looked on his brother with adoration, but deeper within him he felt something slightly unsettling that he didn’t know how to name. He had been in Loki’s mind for a moment, just a moment, flooded deep into the recesses of him. For an instant he had known the depth of Loki’s despair and anger and envy and hurt, and also that of his love, and it had rocked Thor to his very core. He was overjoyed to see Loki like this now, so happy, and he wished he could join him there, but whatever was making him unsettled felt like a weight around his neck.

It was a small feeling though, and easy to push it aside and share in Loki’s smiles and laughter and good humor. Easy to forget about it when Loki tugged him around a corner to crowd him against a wall and steal kisses sweet as honey.

Two days later found them in bed together, shirts off, skin to skin and their mouths wet and hungry.

“Touch me,” Loki said breathlessly.

“I am,” Thor said, tightening his hold around Loki’s shoulders and kissing the slope where his shoulder met his neck.

“Here,” Loki said. He took Thor’s hand and guided it down between them until it brushed against the hardness between his legs. Thor groaned low in his chest. They hadn’t actually done this yet. They’d kissed, and kissed, and pressed their clothed bodies together with the promise of more, but until now the promise had always gone unfulfilled.

“Are you sure—” Thor said, absurdly. He wanted to, desperately, and he knew Loki did too; even if he hadn’t seen Loki’s inner thoughts, the evidence was warm and willing in his arms. And yet a strange part of his mind balked.

If they crossed this line, would they still be brothers?

“I don’t want—” Thor began again.

“What?” Loki asked, gently. In the past he would almost definitely have mocked Thor for this moment of tongue-tie. Perhaps gotten insecure and defensive. Thor breathed heavily through his nose and reminded himself that Loki had seen his thoughts too.

He moved both of his hands to Loki’s cheeks and stroked them with his thumbs.

“I would not want this to make us less than brothers,” Thor said. “I could not bear it.”

Loki turned his face into Thor’s palm and kissed it, then sat up. He pulled the sheets over his lap and looked down at his own hands for a moment. Thor propped himself up on his elbow and kissed Loki’s hip and earned himself a little “mm.”

“What—” Thor asked, but quieted when Loki shushed him.

Loki’s face had gone serious. He was still studying his hands.

“I’ve never done this before,” Loki said. His voice sounded a bit unsteady. “Give me a moment.”

Thor watched him. Tonight the walls faded to transparency near the ceiling and he could see a small stripe of midnight blue sky scattered with stars; Loki’s profile cut sharply against it. His lines weren’t as severe as when they’d come here, but there was still an angularness to him.

Slowly, Loki held one hand up in front of him, fingers spread wide. As Thor watched, his fingertips turned blue. Thor’s breath caught. The blue spread slowly down Loki’s fingers, crept across his hand, down to his wrist. Further. To the elbow.

Loki was shaking. He stared at his own hand and arm.

“Look at me,” Loki said unsteadily. “This is the monster that lives underneath my skin.”

“I’m looking and I see no monster,” Thor said. “I see only Loki.”

“And would you call this Loki ‘brother’?” Loki asked. He finally looked over at Thor, and clenched his blue hand into a fist.

Thor covered Loki’s hand with his own. It was cold, painfully so, his skin more like marble than the warm flesh Thor was used to feeling. Loki made a small sound of dismay, and Thor squeezed his hand.

“I would,” Thor said. “I do. Brother.”

Loki let the blue fade from his skin and collapsed back on the pillow, huffing out a teary little laugh.

“Gods,” he said. “There. Do you see?”

“See what?”

“If you know what I am and yet still name me brother, do you honestly think that a little fucking is somehow going to change anything?”

Thor rolled on top of him and pinned him to the bed and kissed him, deep and heartfelt. Loki wound his arms around Thor’s neck and opened up so sweetly for him.

“Do you really think you’re a monster?” Thor asked.

“I did.”

“And now?”

Thor ached. He’d been so shocked when he’d learned the truth in the aftermath of everything, but he’d had a long year of missing his brother to come to terms with it, and in truth it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Perhaps in the past it might have. The past was gone, though, and now only this moment existed.

“Now…” Loki said. He looked past Thor’s shoulder for a moment, his eyes focused on nothing. “Now I think I’m whatever I choose to be.”

Thor let out a relieved breath. “And what do you choose to be?” He nuzzled into Loki’s neck and nipped at his jaw and held him still when he tried to wiggle free.

“Your brother, you great fool,” Loki said, laughter in his voice. “Your _lover_. Maybe a part-time monster...when it suits me.”

“Mmm,” Thor said, sucking at Loki’s earlobe. “Part-time monster sounds fun. What else? A trickster?”

Loki tried to chase Thor’s lips with his own, but Thor refused to comply, instead continuing his patient assault on Loki’s neck, and Loki let out a little frustrated whine.

“Always,” Loki said.

“A prince?” Thor kept his tone light. He didn’t really expect Loki to answer him directly. He realized suddenly this was part of what had been weighing on him, though. If Loki was truly better, and had no further need of Vanaheim’s healers, what would they do now? Go back to Asgard? The idea seemed ludicrous.

Loki was quiet for a moment while Thor licked across the apple of his throat and worked his way over to the other side of his neck.

“Maybe I will be again,” Loki said. “In time.”

Thor finally pulled his head back to look at him.

“Maybe I will be again, too. In time.”

“No,” Loki said, laying his hand on Thor’s cheek, his eyes soft. “You’ll be a king.”

“Loki—”

“Shh,” Loki said, stroking his fingers into Thor’s beard. “You’ll deserve it.”

Thor crushed their mouths together, too emotional to form a coherent thought, and Loki fisted his hands in Thor’s hair and hauled him even closer.

“I love you so much,” Thor said, rocking their foreheads together while they both panted raggedly.

“Show me,” Loki said roughly.

Thor did, and found out that his brother opened more sweetly for him than he ever could have imagined.

Afterwards, the echoes of each other’s names still on their lips, they sprawled in a comfortable tangle of limbs with the sweat cooling on their brows. Loki turned his head and sleepily kissed Thor’s chest, and Thor stroked his brother’s messy hair, and then closed his eyes and fell asleep to the music of the thunder and rain.


	8. Chapter 8

_Thor— The Allfather has spoken with Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg, and me. He has not given us direct orders yet, but it is clear that he wants us to come to Vanaheim and retrieve you and Loki and the Queen, possibly with force. Obviously there is something greater afoot than just a visit to see your uncle, though I know not what it is. Fandral and I are doing our best to put him off, but if he gives us a direct order we cannot disobey it, and if he decides to send soldiers instead there is nothing we can do. I’m writing to warn you of what may be coming. I hope you are well, and please give my regards to your mother. —Sif_

*

“I thought he used to say ‘a wise king never seeks out war,’” Loki said, doing a fair imitation of Odin’s voice. He pushed his eggs around his plate, not really eating them. “The hypocrite.”

“He says a lot of things,” Thor said. “And now I’ve come to realize that hardly any of them are true.”

His heart felt heavy as he said it. His own breakfast laid untouched, and he pushed away from the table to rise and pace.

Loki crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “All my life I’ve done nothing but try to live up to his standards. I’m done, Thor. It was a rigged game from the beginning. I’m not going to play anymore. I’m not going back there and I don’t care if he sends Sif or if he sends the whole bloody army. I don’t see why he cares about me, anyway. It’s not like he ever did before.”

“He doesn’t want to look weak,” Thor said.

“His ‘image,’” Loki said, making a moue of distaste. “Well, I’m done. I don’t care what he thinks of me anymore. I’m going to go live my own life, for once. A son of the crown, set adrift.”

Thor kept pacing, agitated. “Do you really not care anymore?” he asked Loki.

“Not in the slightest,” Loki said flatly. “He forfeited that privilege, don’t you think?”

Thor finally realized what had been weighing him down. He was angry at his father, and disappointed, but unlike Loki there was also a part of him that still looked up to him and craved his favor. The two halves of him were at odds, though, and he had no idea how to resolve them cleanly. 

How could he reconcile these warring parts? The one wanted to go with Loki, wherever he chose to go after this. Stay with him, be with him, love him—away from the weight of all their lifelong expectations, away from the burden of a father whose love might better be described as ownership. The other part of him felt the duty and responsibility of the crown; still wanted to live up to his father’s expectations; was afraid of being found unworthy again.

“We need to talk to him,” Thor said.

“We?” Loki said, scoffing.

“Fine, I need to talk to him. In person.”

Loki sighed, put upon. “I don’t know what good it will do.”

“Maybe it won’t do any good,” Thor said. “I’m glad that you’ve gotten out of his shadow, brother, but I’m afraid I’m still lingering in it.”

Loki rose and came up behind Thor and slipped his arms around his waist. Thor stopped pacing and leaned back into him, and Loki kissed the shell of his ear.

“You’re not going there right this second,” Loki murmured. “So let’s go flying.”

Thor shivered all over his body. Loki’s low voice in his ear would have been enough to do that anyway, but he’d suggested _flying_. They hadn’t really done that together since they were barely men grown. Thor remembered it well. Flying by himself was always exhilarating, but flying double— He remembered how he had to hold Loki close to him so that he wouldn’t fall, how Loki would cling for dear life, his breathing ragged in Thor’s ear, their chests pressed so tightly together they could feel each other’s hearts beat. In retrospect, it was easy to see why they’d stopped. It was too fraught for...whatever they were to each other. And it was such a vulnerable position for Loki to put himself in, he who’d always hated being vulnerable.

“Are you sure?” Thor asked. “You trust me not to drop you?”

He winced as soon as he said it.

“I trust you,” Loki said, holding him tight. Thor could have wept.

*

Loki clung to Thor’s chest, his leg hooked around Thor’s knee, and whooped in joy. Tears streamed down his cheeks from the wind, and his hair was an absolutely unmitigated disaster, but it didn’t matter. 

They were _flying_.

The ground dropped away beneath them as Mjolnir carried them up into the sky. The forest dwindled until Loki felt like he could reach out and just touch the whole thing, run his hand along the tops of the trees like they were a carpet of grass. They had the freedom of the entire sky before them, and it was exhilarating as it ever was. They could be birds, or dragons perhaps. Untethered. Free.

Well, he was free, anyway. He burrowed more tightly into Thor’s side. It was clear his brother still had a few things holding him down. It was alright. Thor hadn’t had the benefit of burning all his bridges the way Loki had. Loki would help him, and then they could be free together.

Thor took them in a soaring arc over the forest, then back around towards the sea. The sun reflected off the water in a blinding curtain. He took them down low until they skimmed along the waves, then back up in a spray of foam, and their voices both rang out in laughter that was carried away by the wind.

Loki pressed his cheek to Thor’s shoulder and Thor kissed the top of his head.

They spent an hour at the least making the sky theirs.

After a last flourishing loop, Thor brought them down at the very top of one of the curved arms of the castle. They sat with their legs dangling over the edge, windblown and happy, their cheeks red, their mouths curved in smiles.

Loki leaned up and kissed the scent of the wind off of his brother’s lips.

“If you’re going to Asgard, I’m coming with you.”

Thor’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’d do that?”

Loki kicked his heels against the stones and looked out to the ocean.

“I’m not going to let him rule anything in my life anymore,” Loki said, “including where I go or who I’m with. I want to be wherever you are, so if you go, I’ll come. It’s just a talk. I’ll turn into a little snake and you can keep me in your pocket and he won’t even know I’m there.”

Thor threw his arm around Loki’s shoulders, and Loki tilted his face up for more kisses, and he got them, in abundance.

*

Frigga sat in her weaving room, spinning out threads for her loom. The sleepy ancient consciousness of the forest turned into a gleaming silver thread that she wove into her work. Here she pulled out the staid protectiveness of the stones of the castle. There she delicately plucked the awed look that a painter bestowed upon his life’s greatest work. The first song of a newborn mockingbird. The smell of freshly baked bread. The joy a child experienced biting into a long-anticipated cake. She hummed as she worked, questing around her for all of life’s goodness that she could find.

Her song and hands paused when she ran across two young lovers. Starting up again, she spun out the deep, devastating love between them and the simple joy they took in each other’s every touch, every look. It was blinding gold, this thread, almost too bright to look at. She realized she was smiling and crying both.

She’d suspected before, but now she knew. She should probably be horrified, but all she felt was happiness that her sons could have what she never could. What she had never been brave enough for. Had chosen duty over. She could feel their love now, and the strength of it was humbling. Perhaps she’d done something right in her life if both of her boys were capable of such strong emotion. Loved each other so well, and so deeply.

She spun out her own happy tears and added them to her loom.

*

Frigga wasn’t surprised when Thor and Loki came to her together and told her they were going to Asgard.

“I just need to speak to him,” Thor said. “Everything was so sudden, I just…”

He quieted when Frigga laid her hand on his cheek. “In some ways your brother has healed more than you have,” she said. “Go, with my blessing. But I shall stay here. I am Frigga of Asgard no longer. But first, before you leave...”

She left them sitting on her anteroom couch, knees carefully two inches away from each other though they couldn’t tear their eyes off of each other’s faces, and she smiled to herself as she went to her bedroom. From a chest at the foot of the bed she took out the things she’d been working on at her loom—two parcels of fabric, one red and one green, each neatly folded into a square.

She brought them out with her and pretended she didn’t notice Thor and Loki quickly leaning away from one another.

“The red one’s mine, of course,” Loki said blithely, and grinned when Thor smacked him on the shoulder.

“One for each of you,” Frigga said primly, dropping the green in Loki’s lap with an arched eyebrow, and handing the red to Thor.

Loki shook his open and it fell to the floor. The fabric was heavy and draped over his hands, and there was a depth to it, an almost-shimmer. Frigga noted with satisfaction that she’d gotten the color exactly right; it was the same shade as his eyes.

Frigga passed her hand over the fall of fabric, lighting up sigils that had been woven directly into it. They glowed gold before fading away—the lines of _Vegvísir_ and _Ægishjálmr_ and several other sigils, all of them staves of protection and victory in combat. And also—

“ _Lásabrjótur_?” Loki asked, amused. “Do you think that’s a wise one for me?”

“You’ll be opening locked doors whether I help you or not,” Frigga said. “I thought I might make it a bit easier for you.”

Thor shook his cloak out as well. Frigga’s touch made it glow silver. It held all the same sigils of protection and victory that Loki’s did, as well as…

“ _Feingur_ ,” Thor choked out. The sigil for fertility. Loki coughed and Thor flushed red.

“It seemed fitting.” Frigga smiled serenely to cover her amusement.

“Of course!” Thor said, too quickly. “Mother, these are magnificent. Your finest weaving yet.”

“Besides the staves, I wove in every speck of goodness that I could find on Vanaheim. My boys. This is as much protection as a mother’s love can give you.”

“We’re just going to speak with Father,” Thor said. “Do you think we’ll need as much protection as all that?”

Frigga smiled at him, tight-lipped with emotion. Loki’s eyes on her were understanding. He knew they weren’t likely to be coming back here, at least not for a long while. Thor had a good head on his shoulders, but Loki was perceptive about certain things that his brasher brother sometimes didn’t see, at least not right away. They would do well together.

“Call it a mother’s foolishness, then,” she said. “And come, give me a hug before you go.”

They embraced her each in turn. Thor wrapped her up til she had to stand on tiptoe, and Loki let her wrap him up instead and he kissed her cheek as he pulled away.

“I may not have a father,” Loki said to her, quiet and intense, “but you will always be my mother.”

Frigga blinked back tears and touched him on the chin with her thumb. “Go, before I cry all over you.”

They left in a swirl of red and green, their shoulders brushing. Frigga found herself looking in the direction of Frey’s study, and wondering if she was a thousand years too late.

*


	9. Chapter 9

The Bifrost was still broken, Frigga was staying behind in Vanaheim, and a trip by starship would take them a month, so Thor and Loki traveled to Asgard through one of Loki’s secret ways.

“Maybe we’ll surprise him,” Thor said.

“Unlikely,” Loki said. “That old goat probably has Heimdall keeping tabs on us.”

Thor felt his face go red. “Do you think he saw—”

Loki laughed and slipped his arm through Thor’s as they walked down the hallway. “I’ve been concealing us from Heimdall’s sight.” He paused thoughtfully. “Mostly. There were a few times I was quite thoroughly distracted...”

Thor groaned and hung his head.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t tattle on his favorite, though,” Loki said reassuringly. “We got up to far worse antics in our youth and he never ratted you out.”

“Still,” Thor said. Loki was right, part of Heimdall’s gift was also his confidentiality unless it involved matters of Asgard’s security, but Thor didn’t have to like the idea of him knowing. He didn’t have to like the idea of his own father spying on him, either.

“Anyway,” Loki continued, “I could conceal us now if you like. He probably already knows we’re coming, though.”

“Don’t bother,” Thor said. “I’ll not sneak around like a common thief.”

“I, on the other hand, will.”

They found Frey finishing up morning petitions and he met them with firm forearm clasps and a sad smile.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked them.

“Just for now,” Thor said. “We’ll return shortly.” Frey shared a look with Loki that Thor recognized as the same look Frigga had shared with him. Did everyone really think he had anything to fear from the Allfather?

“Thank you,” Loki said. “For everything you’ve done for me. For us.”

“It was nothing,” Frey said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “If you’re ever in trouble again, don’t hesitate to come to me.”

“Take care of Mother,” Loki said, his eyes pleading, and Frey gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I always do,” Frey said softly.

After their goodbyes were finished, Loki had Thor fly them towards the sea, then along the coast until the cliffs rose straight up from the beach. Thor brought them down into the small strip of rocky shore and Loki showed him a crack in the cliff face.

“That barely looks large enough to walk through,” Thor said dubiously.

“Looks can be deceiving,” Loki said, shrugging. “Just walk straight at it and keep going. Don’t stop. I’m not sure what will happen if you do, but I _am_ sure that you don’t want to find out.”

“And where will you be?”

“Sneaking around like a thief.”

Loki shimmered green and gold and his form melted and dissolved to reform into a garter snake coiled in the rocks. He slithered up Thor’s leg and reared up to stick his little forked tongue into Thor’s ear in a snakey kiss, then slithered around the back of his neck and down into his belt pouch.

“Alright then,” Thor said, giving his belt pouch a gentle pat. “Into the cliff we go.”

Walking straight into the rock face was disconcerting to say the least. Thor flinched and closed his eyes, but he didn’t run into anything, and, surprised, he opened them. It was all blackness, although an eerie green light played at the edges of his vision; it disappeared when he tried to turn his head. After a few moments of walking in strange black silence, Thor began to feel the imagined weight of the cliff pressing down on him and the first sliver of uneasiness pierced him. His pace quickened.

“I hope you’re happy, brother,” he said loudly to fill the silence. “I suspect you abandoned me early to make me do all the work.” His pouch rustled and he gave it a poke. The distraction made him feel slightly better.

Finally, he stepped from blackness out into dazzling sun.

His eyes adjusted and he smiled. He was at the top of a mountain and Asgard lay spread out underneath him. Loki hadn’t led them astray. His grin fell a moment later though when he remembered exactly where they were going next. 

Mjolnir took them out of the mountains and over the city to the palace at its heart. It was funny how the sight of the palace had always filled Thor with a sense of warmth and homecoming, and now it twisted him up with a vague sort of dread. He wished Loki wasn’t in snake form and that he could wrap his arms around him and take strength that way. When Thor touched down at the mouth of the Bifrost, he settled for putting his hand in his belt pouch and letting Loki twine around his fingers.

Thor found Odin in his study writing correspondence.

“Father,” Thor said finally when Odin didn’t seem in any hurry to look up from his desk.

Odin didn’t react, just kept writing. Thor fidgeted.

“I expected you some time ago,” Odin said, his voice mild. He signed his name and set his pen down, then looked up at Thor for the first time since he’d entered the room.

Thor was struck by how old he looked. Odin had been old before Thor was even born, but he’d always had a certain vitality to him; the Odinforce, Thor had thought. Perhaps it wasn’t, though, because the old man looking back at him now lacked any of the fire that Thor normally associated with his father.

“I’ve been a little busy,” Thor said. He intended to stop there, but found himself adding, “Doing the things that you wouldn’t.” 

Odin didn’t rise to Thor’s provocation, though, and his voice remained even.

“Whereas I have been busy doing the things that you wouldn’t,” Odin said, his one eye fixed on Thor. “I seem to be the only member of this family who hasn’t forgotten my duty to Asgard.”

“Duty?” Thor asked. “Is that what you call it? Because from where I’m standing it looks a lot like cowardice.” Odin folded his hands and simply looked at Thor, and Thor found more words coming out of him. “Was it duty that led you to lie to us our whole lives? Duty that made you abandon Loki for dead?” With a grimace, Thor remembered Odin’s face when he had stripped Thor of his own powers. “And when you sent me to Earth, I used to think that it had probably been for my own good, but now I see that that was only cowardice too—you didn’t want to deal with what I had become. With what you made me.”

“Thor—”

“No. With what you made _us_. You set us against each other from the beginning. Why, Father? Why did you do it? Any of it?”

Thor wanted to know, desperately. Odin had always seemed as large and remote as a mountain peak, and Thor had always looked up to him with awe and maybe a little fear and a desire to please him. To be seen by him. To make him proud. Odin didn’t look remote or majestic now. He looked old and sad and tired. Small.

“Are there any more secrets you’ve kept?” Thor demanded.

“I have always done what I thought was right for Asgard,” Odin said. 

It was such an unsatisfying answer that Thor found himself clenching his teeth together to keep himself under control.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” Thor asked. “That everything you did to us was for Asgard? That we mean that little to you?”

“Sometimes being a great king means making sacrifices. You’ll learn that some day.”

Thor shook his head, his heart heavy.

“It shouldn’t include sacrificing those you love. What is there to be a king of, otherwise? A plot of land? No. If that’s what it means, then I don’t want it. I’d rather be a good man than a great king.”

He realized as he said it that it was true. For so long, becoming the king after his father stepped down had been Thor’s dream, his goal, the fulfillment of his birthright as Prince of Asgard. Today, it felt like nothing but ashes in his mouth. Thor had always aspired to be like his father; now that seemed like the worst of all possible things. He didn’t know any other way to be, though. He’d grown up in the palace for over a thousand years under Odin’s wing, after all. Who was he without that influence? When Thor, Son of Odin became simply Thor, was there a good man underneath it all? Loki seemed to think so. Thor thought maybe there could be, if he tried.

He needed to find out. Away from Odin. Away from Asgard and its emotional baggage. 

“You keep your throne for now,” Thor said. “But don’t expect us to come back here until you’re gone.”

“I could make you stay,” Odin said.

“But you won’t.”

Perhaps Odin might have, before. Before his fire had gone out. Thor didn’t think he had it in him now, though. If he did he would be fighting back. Putting Thor in his place the way he used to. He would be towering over him, his voice filling the room, not slumping down into his chair with his face sagging and his eye dull.

For the first time in his life, Thor looked upon his father and despised him.

He turned to leave.

“Tell your mother—”

“No,” Thor said.

He stopped with his hand on the door handle.

“And you can keep this,” Thor said, loosing Mjolnir from his belt and tossing it onto Odin’s desk.

Thor strode from the palace, shaking. Loki slithered from his belt pouch and wound up his arm and rested his head on Thor’s shoulder and Thor stroked his little nose. It felt odd not to fly out. He went to the skiff hangar instead, and took the fastest one they had. He had no destination in mind other than _away_. 

Loki finally shimmered back into himself when they were well away from the palace, skimming over the surface of the water. He materialized at Thor’s side, and wrapped his arms around him. Thor clung back, and found himself blinking back tears for the first time. He didn’t realize how tightly he’d been wound until he felt himself relax into his brother’s embrace.

Loki took Thor’s face in his hands and kissed him, and kissed him again.

“Why did you give him your hammer?” Loki asked, fruitlessly tucking Thor’s windblown hair behind his ear and stroking his thumb down Thor’s cheek.

“I don’t know,” Thor said. “I supposed I didn’t want my worth defined by him anymore.”

Loki hooked his arms around Thor’s neck and kissed him again.

“That makes two of us,” Loki said, giving Thor a tight-lipped smile, his eyes soft.

“We’re free now,” Thor said. “We can go anywhere.”

“I thought you wanted to go back to Vanaheim?” Loki said, though it was clear the question was a leading one.

“I think everyone but me realized we weren’t coming back,” Thor said. “At least...not right away.”

Loki smiled wider at that. He squeezed Thor’s hand and went to stand at the prow of the skiff, looking out past the water to the palace and the mountains beyond. His hair and Frigga’s cloak streamed behind him and he spread his arms out wide and tilted his face up to the sun.

“Where would you like to go?” Loki said, turning his head back so Thor could hear him. His eyes sparkled, and his smile was so lovely and free, and Thor was so in love he felt like he might shatter. He felt his heart lift. They had been through so much, and now they had the opportunity to start over, together, happy and healthy and with nothing trying to set them against each other. They could find themselves. Make themselves instead of being made. 

Thor came to join Loki at the prow and slipped his arm around his waist, gazing outward as well. He looked over at Loki and Loki was looking back at him, eyebrows drawn up expectantly. Trusting Thor to guide them. Thor decided to throw a little trust right back, and he smiled.

“Surprise me,” Thor said.

**Author's Note:**

> come visit me at [twitter.com/thunderingraven](https://twitter.com/thunderingraven) and [thunderingraven.tumblr.com](https://thunderingraven.tumblr.com)


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